Hello, I am plaintiffs' counsel in Walker v. SWIFT, a U.S. lawsuit challenging SWIFT's disclosure of its database to the U.S. government as illegal under the Fourth Amendment and federal Right to Financial Privacy Act.

SWIFT, which stands for "Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication", is a giant corporation based in Belgium and is the nerve center of the global financial industry.

Last June the New York Times revealed that the U.S. Treasury Department and CIA approached SWIFT and asked for customer financial records in a manner outside the legal process. SWIFT responded by giving the government its entire database. The original article can be viewed here:

No government right to "unfettered access" to private bank records, court rules

SWIFT Facing Billions in Damages

Chicago (June 15, 2007). A federal district court has upheld a multi-billion dollar class action against SWIFT, the international bank clearinghouse, for secretly sharing customers' bank records with the U.S. government in violation of bank privacy laws.

Lawyers today announced that Chief Judge James F. Holderman of U.S. District Court in Chicago refused this week to dismiss claims that SWIFT's disclosure of millions of bank records to the government violated the federal Right to Financial Privacy Act and the Fourth Amendment.

In his 20-page opinion, Judge Holderman rejected SWIFT's defense that it acted in good faith by relying on government subpoenas. Any claim to "unfettered government access to the bank records of private citizens" is "constitutionally problematic", the court said.

In refusing to dismiss the case, Judge Holderman noted reports that "SWIFT officials were aware that their disclosures were legally suspect, but they nevertheless continued to supply database information to the U.S. government."

Plaintiffs Ian Walker and Stephen Kruse filed the massive class action last June, seeking billions in federal privacy damages, after the New York Times reported the administration had been requesting, and receiving, customer financial records from SWIFT without judicial authorization and limited Congressional oversight.

The plaintiffs are represented by Chicago attorney Steven Schwarz and New Jersey attorneys Bruce Afran, and Carl Mayer. The three are also among the leaders in the pending NSA phone records suit in San Francisco.

"The SWIFT program is another example of reckless disregard for the Constitution and values that make us who we are as a nation," Schwarz said in response to Judge Holderman's ruling. "As Benjamin Franklin said, `those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.' "

"Never has any U.S. administration sanctioned such wide-ranging violations of privacy rights," Afran added. "This is yet another decision recognizing the illegality of the administration's domestic spy program."

SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, based in Brussels, is the nerve center of the global banking industry and routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The complaint charges SWIFT with disclosing its entire database to the United States Government without subpoena or court authority.

SWIFT's actions have been widely condemned overseas by privacy watchdogs in Germany, Belgium, France, and the European Union where some regulators have declared SWIFT's conduct to be in violation of their countries' privacy laws.

The decision comes as the Senate Judiciary Committee announced it will pursue long-hidden Justice Department memos authorizing the National Security Agency's "Terrorist Surveillance Program".

In August of 2006 federal judge Anna Diggs Taylor declared that program illegal and ordered it to be immediately halted.

"In our own time we have seen domination spread over the social landscape to a point where it is beyond all human control. Compared to this stupendous mobilization of materials, of wealth, of human intellect, of human labor for the single goal of domination, all other recent human achievements pale to almost trivial significance. Our art, science, medicine, literature, music and "charitable" acts seem like mere droppings from a table on which gory feasts on the spoils of conquest have engaged the attention of a system whose appetite for rule is utterly unrestrained."

but what were their real reasons? That looks incredibly naive. Or is this question utterly naive? The US government would not have had any legal leverage over them, or would they?

Motivation?

"SWIFT's defense that it acted in good faith"

from the article you link to

"[the program] began as an emergency response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said. Worried about potential legal liability, the Swift executives agreed to continue providing the data only after top officials, including Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, intervened. At that time, new controls were introduced."

"After an initial debate, Treasury Department lawyers, consulting with the Justice Department, concluded that the privacy laws applied to banks, not to a banking cooperative like Swift."

buggers

Good luck with the defense of our privacy and thanks for posting about this here!

You're interpreting it correctly. Just about every adult in the U.S. is in the class. The class isn't "certified" yet, though. In the U.S. legal system, a judge has to certify that the proposed class meets certain requirements. That stage of the litigation is still a few months away.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The EU and the United States have reached a preliminary deal on how U.S. authorities can consult data from the international banking network SWIFT in anti-terror investigations, an EU spokesman said on Wednesday.

"We have a draft agreement," Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said of an accord aimed at allaying European data privacy concerns.

Brian Smith, a Federal Protective Service guard at an FDA office in College Park, said some guards were ready to walk off their jobs this month after a contractor failed to pay them. There was a feeling of frustration, he says. (Wilfredo Lee -- Associated Press)

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"What I really hope is that we can conclude this in the next one or two weeks."

Roscam Abbing did not give details but said the deal included provisions on data protection. "Then it is for SWIFT and for the banks to do their share in informing in advance their customers about providing the data," he said.

U.S. officials could not confirm if a preliminary deal had been reached. One said: "The process for reaching a final deal is still ongoing."

EU and Belgian watchdogs said last year Brussels-based SWIFT broke privacy laws by letting the U.S. Treasury Department secretly consult its records in terrorism investigations after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

SWIFT, which handles global financial transfers, is a cooperative owned by roughly 7,800 financial institutions in the more than 200 countries that use it. It says it was bound to obey a U.S. subpoena to transfer the data.

A spokesman for SWIFT said the company, which does not take part in the talks, could comment only when it sees the details of a final deal.

SWIFT announced last week it had decided to modify its messaging architecture to ensure that intra-European data be stored only in Europe, and not in the United States. It said it hoped that would allay data privacy concerns.

SWIFT's board is due to approve final details of that plan in September, said Euan Sellar, spokesman for SWIFT.

Brussels and Washington are also in talks to replace an interim deal on the transfer to the United States of private data on transatlantic air passengers.

Roscam Abbing said there remained political and technical issues to be solved and the EU hoped for a deal by the end of the month.

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What about foreign individuals? Should we initiate our own lawsuits in our local jurisdictions? What if we have been involved in bank transactions with US banks? (I happen to still have an active US checking account which I opened in 2000 and I have made international transfers to it since I left in 2004)

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?